From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 June 1927, Page 21

From Labour’s Viewpoint.

The Bible in Schools Written for THE SUN, By H. E. Holland, M.P.

This is the thirteenth article of a weekly series contributed by the Leader of the Opposition, political head of the New Zealand Labour Party. It is as fair to Mr. Holland as it is to TH E SUN to state that his pithy opinions are entirely his own and represent only the policy of the Labour Party ; also, that, in their publication, the right of criticism is not surrendered. THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS \ LREADY the Bible-in-Schools anmial battle has commenced. The controversialists ot the Churches who are for and against the proposal are preparing their orations, and the legions who take a delight in addressing long letters to long-suffering editors are busy filling their fountain Pens and untwisting the tapes of their Coronas for the fray. Vitally affecting, as it does, the educational system of the country, the proposal is of sufficient importance to warrant the general public looking to both the Government and the Opposition for a statement of policy on the subject. Peculiarly enough, the present Government has no policy to offer. The Prime Minister is opposed to the proposal, hut a majority of his party is said to favour it. The Opposition, on the other hand, stands definitely against the idea. FOR NON-SECTARIAN EDUCATION By its conference decisions the Labour Party is pledged to uphold Lee, compulsory and secular education. Like all other political parties, the Labour Party includes in its ranks men and women of all religions and no religion; and we bind ourselves to

make and administer the laws so as to conserve to the individual the maxi- * mum of liberty in the matter of re- 7 ligious belief and observance. We r hold that religion is essentially a mat- 1 ter for the individual conscience; and, t this being so, no majority, either in s the House or the country, can ever r have a right to impose its particular v form of religion or religious teaching on the minority. In our opinion, r the proper places in which to teach 1 religion are the churches, the Sunday schools and the homes; and the best way to teach the children the ® loftiest precepts the Bible contains f is for the parents themselves to live 1 up to them. Of course, a changed eco- F nomic environment would be neces- 1 sary before the average parent could 1 live up to, say, the- command, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do J; to you, do ye even so to them." It was t possibly a recognition of this fact £ that led to the “Encyclopedia Britannica” to observe that the ethics of = Socialism and the ethics of Christianity are identical. THE SECTARIAN ASPECT f It is safe to assume that the Bill to 1 be introduced this year will be the £ same as that of last year and the year c before; and it will be remembered r that, in his second reading speech in I 1925, the author of the Bill, Mr. L. £ M. Isitt (then Member for Christ- v church North) presented his case in t language that left no doubt that in his mind the measure represented a fight between the Protestant Churches on the one hand and the Catholic j Church on the other hand; and a sec j tion of the non-Catholic press, l opposing the Bill, described the proposal as one to introduce a Protestant j 'i text-book and Protestant religious 1 exercises into the State schools . “threatening to inflict an outrageous j injustice upon taxpayers of other <Ve r nominations or of no denomination who were to be compelled to pay f or teaching which they could not e jn seientiouslv accept, and upon teach ers who were to be compelled to plea> j an utterly illusory conscience cla" jse.” The Labour Party, accepting the statement of the author of the Bill as to I

its fundamentals, sees in the proposal the inevitability of sectarian warfare in the State schools. The bitterness which last year characterised the debate in the Legislative Council, when the Bill was narrowly defeated, was in itself a demonstration of what will certainly happen in and out of the schools if the principles contained in the Bill should ever find their way on to the Statute Book as enacted legislation. A RETURN TO DENOM (NATIONALISM As Mr. McGregor has pointed out, there was a time when Mr. Isitt himself was a fierce opponent of religious teaching in the schools. Mr. Isitt had been to Britain and had seen the system working out its results disastrously there; and on his return he told the people of New Zealand tha* ( “He had gone away a supporter < Bible teaching in schools in sor form, but had come back determir Je( j to oppose, by every legitimate mr ,ans in his poKver, any interference with the present system. He said hr, waf satisfied that, if any concession were made in this matter of educmficm, il would simply mean as time pr ogressec a return to denominations \|ism ant the ultimate destruction of the exist ing system, for the establishment ol which we had cause to thankful.’ .Now, it is clear that (> immediate effect of Mr. Isitt’s Bill, jf it became law, would be to cresr a State re ligion—which no one cl ,sires. Its ulti mate effect, as Mr. Is-i'l £ in the says ol his wider outlook ne cognised, wouic mean a return to de nominationalism When I spoke in t’h r second reading debate in 1925, I ey.r pressed the opinior that, if the Cathoii leaders had beer opportunist politi /dans, they wouic have supported t /i e Bill, and, having got it on the Sta’.Mte Book, would ther have come derr /ending State subsidie> far their deno ininational schools —ii which case tl, could have been nc logical refusp f of their claim while the Bible-in-Sclu~ £,is legislation remained In this opii /ion I was fortified by th< pronounce! cents of the then Directoi of Education (a Protestant gentle man), the New Zealand Edueationa Professor Hugh Mackenzie and mejoy other eminent educationists who wu-j/e all agreed that the introduc tion ot. religious teaching into the_Stat<

schools must inevitf .ably be followed by State subsidies to denominational schools. OBJECTS RS OF ALL DENQ' MINATIONS Even if e were no stronger objection, the 'fact that the Christian Churches th# -ruselves are so sharply divided over the proposal ought to be sufficient to ensure its rejection. It is true that ie Catholic Church has proclaimed it s unwavering opposition to the projr,osal; but it is not correct to assume, as some of the principal sup of the Bill have done, that among the religious elements it is only the CV.dholic people who are in opposition,. Many members of the Protestan'c churches oppose it because they ffwr it will injure and not help the cn/ase of religion. Canon Wilford, principal of Christ’s College, Canterbury, has pointed out that “the sys- | tem proposed would rob the Church of the first work her Founder gave her, viz., the teaching of His religion,’’ and the Canon has further said that for Protestants to assist the Bill would be a surrender of first principles. Members of other denominations, some of them occupying high public positions, haev voiced protests based on rather similar grounds. The Maori chief, the Hon. W. Rikihana, told the Legislative Council last year that in his district there were Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Mormans and Ratanaites; that he had relatives in all these sects, and could foresee trouble if the Bill was passed. There was soundness in Rikihana’s contention that religious exercises should be performed by persons specially fitted for the work, instead of by teachers merely reciting them as a. duty. OPPOSITION FROM EDUCATIONISTS Not only are there objections from every shade of religious thought; but a majority of teachers, including many of the very highest in the profession, are wholly opposed to the Bible-in-Schools movement. If the Bill had not been defeated in the Legislative Council last year the State Schools Defence League petitions (with which many professors and lecturers had associated themselves) would have been before the House. One of these petitions contained fifteen signatures, and ten of the signatories were professors at Auckland University College, while the other five were lecturers at the same college; and the first signature to the Canterbury petition was that of the rector of Canterbury College, Dr. Chilton. THE QUESTION OF A REFERENDUM I . have frequently been asked whether the Labour Party would agree to a referendum on the question of religious teaching in the schools, The answer is in the negative. The Labour Party stands for referring questions of political and economic importance to the people for decision; but it does not require any comprehensive argument to prove that a matter of religion. which is so essentially one of conscience, could not be settled by a

popular referendum. To concede the right of referendum in the matter of a Bill of this kind would mean to recognise the right of a majority to impose a form of religious teaching, and therefore its religion, on the minority. For the time being the Protestants are in the majority; but if, in the future, the Catholics should become the majority, the right would then be theirs to impose their religion and its teaching on the Protestant and other non-Catholic minority. It would also mean that, if the Atheists and Rationalists (now an extremely small minority, according to the Census report) should in the course of time outnumber the Catholics and Protestants combined, they would have an established right to forbid all religious teaching after an affirmative referendum vote. It is true that this latter is a remote probability; but all the possibilities exist, and, as the. Labour movement sees the position, the real safeguard is in keeping off the Statute Book every piece of legislation calculated to foster sectarian strife, either within or without the State schools.